How Discourse And Collaboration Can Be Used In Mathematics Classrooms To Promote Engagement And Learning

Educators are always looking for ways to promote engagement and achievement for their students. One thing secondary mathematics teachers can do to encourage engagement and achievement is to have students collaborate with each other on group-worthy tasks and engage in mathematical conversations and discourse. Chapter one of this Capstone gives background information as to why this work is important to the author and the author’s personal experiences with collaboration and discourse in mathematics. In chapter two, lots of research and literature is reviewed on the topics of mathematical mindsets, discourse, and collaboration. This chapter gives teachers ways to have students converse about mathematics and collaboratively work together on group-worthy mathematical tasks in the classroom. Chapter three describes the unit guides created for the capstone project and chapter four gives a reaction to the work. This capstone uses synthesized research to answer the question, how can teachers promote engagement and learning through collaboration and discourse in the secondary mathematics classroom? My project addresses this question, by utilizing the Understanding by Design Framework (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). The unit guides provide educators with various discourse routines and group-worthy tasks to support mathematics instruction that is engaging and promotes achievement